Bridgeport's Seaside Village still bailing out

Updated 12:00 am, Thursday, November 1, 2012

BRIDGEPORT -- James Brown had to walk in a zigzag line down Sims Street on Wednesday to dodge the tree that used to sit on his front sidewalk and that now lay strewn across the middle of the narrow street.

He stopped in front of the co-op unit across from his own and watched his neighbors carry drenched documents, chairs and curtains out from their cellar and drop them on top of a large pile on the sidewalk.

"I can't even get into my cellar," Brown said, shaking his head.

Unlike last year, when Tropical Storm Irene spared Brown's unit at the Seaside Village housing complex, Superstorm Sandy seemed to have it out for the 77-year-old South End resident. After its strong winds splintered the Sims Street tree, Sandy uprooted a tree in Brown's backyard and laid it down in his backyard, right over his cellar doors.

Then Sandy merged with several high tides and did to the residents of all 257 units what Irene had done to most of them just one year ago. It poured more than 7 feet of Long Island Sound water, raw sewage and oil into their cellars, knocking over brand new water heaters, furnaces and damaging all of their possessions. In Brown's case, the damage was expensive because the retiree likes to fix computers in his spare time and stored them in the basement, right next to his washer and dryer.

While Brown walked around his street Wednesday looking out -- in vain he found out later -- for a city or United Illuminating Co. crew to help, his neighbors worked at getting the murky water out of their cellars. Some opened basement windows and threw bucketfuls outside.

Some used generator-powered water pumps -- the neighborhood was also without power -- to pump the brown liquid into the streets. Others, like Eneida Lugo, a Cole Street resident, hired friends to clear the water out.

It wasn't an easy task. By 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, the men helping Lugo estimated that they had dumped about 250 bucketfuls into the street and had only uncovered three of the seven staircase steps. Lugo, who was laid off two months ago, worried that the co-op's insurance money wouldn't come through for months, like last year.

Theresa Sharp, 86, worried that the co-op complex would continue to be a target for natural disasters. She has lived at Seaside Village for 56 years and had never experienced as much flooding and damage as she has in the last 13 months.

"I've said it for 55 years that I'm leaving," she said. "But now I'm really leaving. Everything is gone."

Mark Heyward, who lives in a unit on Burnham Street resident, also has thought about leaving. When Irene ruined his basement last year, Heyward had not only replaced his furnace and hot water heater. The 42-year-old, who works at PerkinElmer in Shelton, had completely renovated the basement, installing new walls and buying new furniture. His 18-year-old son had been using the space as a bedroom.

All of his son's belongings are now destroyed and Heyward will have to gut the entire cellar.

"The sad thing is I can't even sell it," Heyward said of his home. "Everybody now knows we're in a flood zone."